Will more guns create a safer society?

[Derideo_Te]

Having the item gives us some benifit which off-sets that harm.

Except that studies on guns in the home prove that they increase the risks significantly, especially for children. The "benefit" is outweighed by the harm.

 

[Ellipsis]

The explicit purpose of a gun is to kill.

Right. If you want the ability to kill someone, the gun is the best tool for that job.

Follow the thread back via the links and you will find post #5 where someone tried to disingenuously pretend that guns were no different to hammers and chainsaws.

Right. If you want the ability to kill someone, the gun is the best tool for that job.

Did you have some kind of a point you were trying to make, or.....

Except that studies on guns in the home prove that they increase the risks significantly, especially for children. The "benefit" is outweighed by the harm.

I looked at the internals of your studies and they're biased. Your data is crap and therefore your argument is crap.

Guns, like bleach and kitchen knives, have to be put away or someone, especially a child, can get injured or killed. We don't go around banning things, we teach people to put their stuff away.

 

[Derideo_Te]

I looked at the internals of your studies and they're biased. Your data is crap and therefore your argument is crap.

And yet you cannot provide a single shred of credible unbiased evidence to support your own biased opinion about those studies.

 

[2aguy]

Except the studies themselves.....which are biased against guns by known anti gun researchers....

 

[2aguy]

and this Black Friday...NCIS checks may break the record...

 

[Ellipsis]

And yet you cannot provide a single shred of credible unbiased evidence to support your own biased opinion about those studies.

Didn't you read your own source? Slate.com advocates policy. That alone means they aren't a reputable source for empirical data. Use a source which does not advocate policy and is detached from and dispassionate about the material.

Back to your point: yes guns are the best tool for killing people. And?

 

[Saigon]

Except the studies themselves.....which are biased against guns by known anti gun researchers....

Right.

So in the past week you have rejected 60+ years of history because it was biased, and now you reject gun studies because they are baised, too.

Would it be fair to say that you will reject any and very study on any topic, unless it conforms to your personal political beliefs?

Do you think that is smart?

 

[Roadrunner]

and this Black Friday...NCIS checks may break the record...

WTF is an "NCIS" check?

 

[2aguy]

Except that studies on guns in the home prove that they increase the risks significantly, especially for children. The "benefit" is outweighed by the harm.

Except......gun accidents...like gun violence....are going down, not up.....and as to the studies you talk about....

Lies Damned Lies and Washington CeaseFire s Statistics - The Truth About Guns

basically they use Dr. Kellerman’s own numbers and methodology to show that in homes without a firearm you are ninety-nine times more likely to suffer a non-firearm related killing than you are to kill an intruder without a firearm . . .

But, back to the problems with the new and improved 22 times number.

#1) Dr. Kellerman initially failed to state how he determined that the gun used belonged in the home or had been brought into it by someone else. Four years later he wrote a letter to the NEJM with a correction stating that in follow-up interviews it was determined that in 63% of the cases the gun was organic to the household. So, 0.63 times 22 means you’re only 13.6 times more likely to be ki . . . etc. (I think I’ll start using the acronym TMLTBKBAGIYHTTKAI . . . or, better yet we’ll just use TML (times more likely). So, that has reduced the 22 TML figure down to 13.6.

#2) Dr. Kellerman failed to account for other risk factors like drug use, criminals or criminal activity in the home. According to his study’s Table 3, 53% of the case study households contained at least one adult who had been arrested. So 0.47 times 13.64 leaves 6.4 TML.

#3) Most of the killings didn’t actually occur “in the home,” Oops! According to Kellerman’s own figures, only 23.9% of the homicides happened in the home of the victim. So, 0.239 times 6.4 gives us 1.5321812 so let’s call it 1.5 TML, shall we?

#4) Kellerman’s study includes suicides committed with guns. The problem with that is he did no research to determine if the “victim” acquired the weapon solely in order to commit suicide or if they used it as a “method of opportunity.” And despite the antis claims to the contrary, numerous studies have shown that suicide rates are independent of method. In other words, taking away guns may reduce the gun suicide rate, but non-gun suicides will increase enough to offset this.

#5) And the biggest problem of all: Dr. Kellerman seems to believe that killing someone is the only way to use a gun defensively (one wonders, then, what he thinks of police departments who routinely arrestpeople instead of killing them). But according to Dr. Kleck’s study Targeting Guns (as cited on page 19of Gun Facts ver. 6.0) in less than 0.1% of DGUs is the attacker killed. Indeed, in 92% of DGUs the victim merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot.

So, putting all this together, what do we have (besides the fact that 22 TML is a completely bogus number)? After my swipe at number crunching we have reduced TML to 1.5, but what does that mean in real life?

Well, according to the CDC‘s numbers, over the 11 years from 1999 to 2009 we averaged 11,800 firearm-related murders annually. If we carry that number through 2010 and look at the census numbers, that means the your chance of being murdered with a gun is 11,800/309,000,000 or 0.0038%. So even if we accept Dr. Kellerman’s premise that guns are only useful when they kill someone, having a gun in your home raises your odds of being killed from 0.0038% to 0.0059%.

 

[2aguy]

Would it be fair to say that you will reject any and very study on any topic, unless it conforms to your personal political beliefs?

Sorry, Saigon...I look at the study and the research...and too often, research by the left is heavily biased....for example...Dr. Gary Kleck....who found in his study that guns are used on average 2.5 million times a year to stop crime and save lives....started out as an anti gun researcher....John Lott....one of the experts on the issue, was neutral to anti gun when he did his research.....the truth is the truth and facts are facts...unless a lefty is doing the research....and as John Lott pointed out...the researcher who did the survey you keep citing....said he was looking to help stiffen the spines of anti gun politicians...he told this to John Lott....and you don't think going into the research with that attitude influences their research?

 

[2aguy]

WTF is an "NCIS" check?

That's where Mark Harmon and his team come in and investigate you....

Let me try that again....NICS....

 

[2aguy]

And another look at that false idea that guns are more dangerous to the owners...

Can Owning a Gun Really Triple the Owner s Chances of being Murdered

Can Owning a Gun Really Triple the Owner's Chances of being Murdered?
The Anatomy of an Implausible Causal Mechanism

1. GARY KLECK1

+Author Affiliations

1. 1Florida State University

Abstract
Using a case-control design comparing homicide victims with matched nonvictims, Kellermann et al. (1993) concluded that keeping a gun in one's home increased the risk of being murdered by a factor of 2.7. The authors' underlying assumption was that a significant elevation in homicide risk derived from the risk of being murdered with a gun kept in the victim's home. This article shows that homicides are rarely committed with guns belonging to members of the victim's home and that such killings could be responsible for no more than a 2.4% increase in the relative risk of being murdered. Guns in one's own home have little to do with homicide risk. Scholars need to attend more closely to the mechanisms by which an alleged causal effect is supposed to operate and to consider their plausibility before concluding that an association reflects a causal effect.

 

[2aguy]

And here is John Lott on guns in the home....

Response to claim about risk of guns in the home - Crime Prevention Research Center

In response to claims in the Indianapolis Star by Stephen Dunlop, with Hoosiers Concerned about Gun Violence, about the benefits of gun regulations and the risk of guns in the home John Lott has this letter to the editor:

Stephen Dunlop, with Hoosiers Concerned about Gun Violence, makes a number of mistakes in his Aug. 15 letter, “Gun violence remains a public health issue.” In talking about the risks of guns in the home, Dunlop ignored that the research he cited assumes that if a person was killed and a gun was owned in the home, it was the gun in the home that was responsible for the death. In fact, virtually all of those deaths were due to guns being brought in by criminals getting into the home. For one of the papers in the meta-analysis, in only eight of the 444 homicide cases was a “gun involved (that) had been kept in the home.” Nor do the studies separate homes of gang members from those of law-abiding citizens.

As to Dunlop’s claim that my research is “discredited,” if he had looked at the literature, he would have discovered that about two-thirds of peer-reviewed research by economists and criminologists find that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime. And no one finds higher murder, rape or robbery from concealed handgun laws.

John R. Lott Jr.

President

Crime Prevention Research Center

 

[BlackSand]

They always leave out Mexico....where the government, the police and the cartels work together to murder innocent Mexican citizens...just ask the 43 student teachers murdered by police and cartel members...

as well as the rest of Latin America, Nigeria, Kenya...Russia....lots of gun control....and only the bad guys have guns...and the murder rates are a lot higher than the U.S.

That is true ... The map below provided by the United Nations identifies the countries with the highest homicide rates in dark blue.



The darkest blue countries have some of the most strict gun laws or incredibly low guns per capita rates.

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Um....no they don't.

Most of Europe has MUCH tighter gun laws than the US - and FAR less murders. Ditto Australia and New Zealand.

Uh ... The United States and Europe are not the only countries in the world. You cannot make a statement about countries, homicides and gun laws ... Then ignore 87% of the countries on Earth.

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[2aguy]

The explicit purpose of a gun is to kill.

The explicit purpose of a gun in the hands of a criminal, dangerously mentally ill person, or an out of control government is to kill.....

The explicit purpose of a gun in the hands of a good, law abiding, innocent civilian...is to stop criminals, dangerously mentally ill people, or out of control governments....

Which is why good people need to own and in a lot of cases carry guns for protection....

 

[2aguy]

Gun checks up this Black Friday....

Huge Gun Sales Numbers This Black Friday Averaging 3 NICS Checks Per Second Concealed Nation

On the busiest shopping day of the year, gun sales were a big piece of the puzzle as more Americans are buying up arms. Last year on Black Friday, NICS processed a total of 144,758 background checks. At 2pm today, they were slated to surpass that number. The amount of NICS checks today is around 3-times the amount processed on a normal day.

It seems that Black Friday deals on firearms and accessories are getting better year after year, and it also seems that more people are taking notice of the need to protect themselves.

A contributing factor to the increase in sales could be the recent riots in Ferguson that followed the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Wilson in a shooting death of a teenager back in August. With the story making national headlines, it has likely made people aware that a riot or other event such as this could happen one day in their own back yards.

 

[Geaux4it]

nm

 

[Roadrunner]

They always leave out Mexico....where the government, the police and the cartels work together to murder innocent Mexican citizens...just ask the 43 student teachers murdered by police and cartel members...

as well as the rest of Latin America, Nigeria, Kenya...Russia....lots of gun control....and only the bad guys have guns...and the murder rates are a lot higher than the U.S.

That is true ... The map below provided by the United Nations identifies the countries with the highest homicide rates in dark blue.



The darkest blue countries have some of the most strict gun laws or incredibly low guns per capita rates.

.

Um....no they don't.

Most of Europe has MUCH tighter gun laws than the US - and FAR less murders. Ditto Australia and New Zealand.

Uh ... The United States and Europe are not the only countries in the world. You cannot make a statement about countries, homicides and gun laws ... Then ignore 87% of the countries on Earth.

.



.

There is no other country on Earth with a 13% minority committing more than half of the murders and other violent crimes.

The US cannot be compared to any other place.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Didn't you read your own source? Slate.com advocates policy.

Seriously? That is your "rebuttal?

Slate just reported on the study because that is what Slate does, just like Huffpo, Drudge, Breitbart, DailyKos, etc, etc.

Your credibility has just nosedived into negative territory since you attacked the messenger and not the actual originators of the study.

 

[BlackSand]

There is no other country on Earth with a 13% minority committing more than half of the murders and other violent crimes.

The US cannot be compared to any other place.

I didn't make the comparison ... I was commenting on the comparisons made by others and the deficiencies in their comparisons. If you think the racial element should determine our gun laws ... Then I think that falls short of the Constitution.

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